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Midlands4Cities fully funded PhD Scholarships are available

Dr. Nicholas Gebhardt

Professor of Jazz and Popular Music Studies, Director of Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research

Nick Gebhardt is Professor of Jazz and Popular Music Studies and Director of Research in the Birmingham School of Media.

His work focuses on jazz and popular music in American culture and his publications include Going For Jazz: Musical Practices and American Ideology (Chicago), Vaudeville Melodies: Popular Musicians and Mass Entertainment in American Culture, 1870-1929 (Chicago) and the co-edited collection The Cultural Politics of Jazz Collectives: This Is Our Music (Routledge). In 2014, he founded the new Routledge book series Transnational Studies in Jazz with University colleague Tony Whyton, which provides a platform for rethinking the methodologies and concepts used to analyse jazz.

From 2010-2013, Nick was a senior researcher for the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA)-funded Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities project, a European consortium of 13 researchers working across seven universities in five countries. He is currently the part of for the transnational JPI Heritage Plus-funded research project Cultural Heritage and Improvised Music in European Festivals (CHIME) and is the Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded research network Jazz and Everyday Aesthetics. He is on the editorial board of the Jazz Research Journal (Equinox) and edits the journal’s Extended Play, which offers a space for experimental writing about jazz.

Areas of Expertise

Jazz Studies

Popular Music Studies

Cultural History of American Music

Cultural theories of jazz and popular music

Qualifications

BA (Hons), University of Sydney

PhD, University of Sydney

Memberships

International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK - Ireland

Organisation of American Historians

Society for American Music

American Society for Aesthetics

Teaching

MA Media and Cultural Studies

Research

Nick's research covers such diverse fields as jazz and popular music studies, cultural theory, media and cultural studies, American history, and American studies. All of these are complimented by his previous career as a radio broadcaster and producer, arts journalist and ongoing career as a musical practitioner.

His published work focuses on jazz cultures and histories, and involves a number of major research projects, including theories of jazz history, jazz and its audiences, and jazz and philosophy. Recent chapters on the folklorist Alan Lomax's Library of Congress recordings of Jelly Roll Morton and the Miles Davis Quintet's 1964 performance of 'My Funny Valentine' at the Teatro Dell'Arte in Milan explore the relationship between music and historical narratives in different media. Two longitudinal, qualitative research projects with regionally-based external partners, Jazzlines in Birmingham and the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, document changing concepts of musical value among jazz audiences, performers and promoters. This theme has been the focus of several major projects that explore transformations in the meaning and value of popular music, including his most recent monograph, Music is Our Business: Vaudeville and the Making of Popular Musicians in American Culture, 1870-1929 (University of Chicago Press, 2016).

Postgraduate Supervision

Nick is interested in supervising doctoral students researching all aspects of jazz and popular music studies, particularly students who are interested in cultural theory, the historiography of music. His current PhD students are working on topics such as Northern soul, popular music consumption and big data, the politics of jazz, creative practice in jazz composition, empathetic performance and group improvisation, sound art, musicality and musical production, anarcho-punk, jazz on television in Portugal during the dictatorship, and audio mastering in popular music.

Publications

Vaudeville Melodies: Popular Musicians and Mass Entertainment in American Culture, 1870-1929. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

“Hollywood Musicals Make History.” In Edwards, S., Sayer, F., and Dolski, M., eds. History on Screen: Documentary, Film and Television for Historians. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.

“A Time For Jazz: History and Narrative in Alan Lomax’s.” In Fagge, R., and Pillai, N., eds. New Jazz Conceptions: History, Theory, Practice. London: Routledge, 2016.